


Moonlight

by spanglemaker9



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4357856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanglemaker9/pseuds/spanglemaker9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dark One misses home...and misses Killian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> More pre-Season 5 feelings.... Is it September yet?

The Jolly Roger is quiet and dark, but she knows he’s here. She can smell him, sense him, feel him on the air. Just one of the many new…perks? oddities? curses?... of being the Dark One is this bizarre, expanded sensory perception. She can see, hear, and smell better, but she has other senses now that she doesn’t even have a name for. All she knows is that her skin tingles and her brain sparks and her heart thumps and she just _knows_. He’s in there.

She’s not supposed to be here. Not yet, not like this. She’s still this Dark, untamed wild thing. She doesn’t even know herself—what she’s become and what she can do—not yet. And until she knows, she won’t risk coming home to those she loves. They think she’s lost, trapped somewhere. She’s not. She knows where she is and she can come and go as she pleases now. The fucking Dark One can do whatever she wants. If she wants to come back to Storybrooke, she just…appears there.

It’s a temptation that’s becoming harder and harder to resist, and tonight she couldn’t resist it. She can stay away from Henry and Snow and Charming and Neal because they need to be kept safe from her. But him… He’s seen darkness before. He’s lived it. He’s _been_ it. If there’s one person she loves who could handle her as she is, it’s him. He could stand by her side and hold her and let her go and never lose himself. This man, so dark and light, so bad and so good. He’s a match for the Dark One. He’s spent his whole long existence holding his own against the Dark One, first as an enemy, now as… What is he to her?

 _Important_. He’s important. Which is why, even though she suspects he can take care of himself, she won’t come to him yet. Because if she’s wrong—if he’s not quite strong enough or she’s too strong in a way she doesn’t understand yet—that’s a risk she can’t take. Not with him. He’s too precious. There’s only one of him and it took them hundreds of years across multiple magical realms to find each other. She won’t risk him now.

But nights are long, even for the Dark One. And she longs for him. Like every other emotion, her need is sharper, more tangible, more irresistible. He’s here and tonight, she just needs to see him, even if he can’t see her yet.

She crosses the deck silently. She can do anything now—absolutely anything—even floating an inch above the planks of the Jolly without touching down. There’s no sound except the gentle splash of the water against the hull of the Jolly Roger and the creak of the ropes as the ship rocks against its moorings. And his breathing. She can hear it, the soft sigh of each breath he takes. She can feel it, like he’s exhaling across the nape of her neck. Her senses draw in tight, so much anticipation and want.

Without disturbing even the air around her, she glides down the ladder into the captain’s quarters. And there he is. He’s in his narrow bed, on his back, one arm resting on his abdomen, the other, the handless one, flung up over his head. His face is turned just slightly towards the window over his bed, and the dim moonlight spills across him, tracing each beautiful feature.

He is so, so lovely. Her heart—is that still her heart or some other, new, dark organ? She doesn’t know yet—clenches tight at the sight of him.

She’s hovering over him in an instant. Sometimes she moves without meaning to, arriving at places that crossed her mind before she’s even made up her mind to move. It’s things like that which make her stay away. Until she knows, until she can control it all, she won’t put them at risk. But this, she thinks she can manage. She just wants to look, and maybe to touch.

Her eyes take him in, the straight, sharp angle of his nose, those thick, black eyebrows, furrowed even in his sleep, his lips… God, she remembers those lips. Soft, strong, perfect. They’re parted slightly, his breathing slow and even in his sleep. She inhales on instinct, wanting his air inside of her. It matters, in some way she doesn’t have words for yet. But that breath he just exhaled finds its way into her throat and down into her lungs and some small part of him unfurls inside of her. She sighs in contentment.

His black hair is tousled, tangled across his forehead. It makes him look younger, almost boyish. She reaches up and brushes it back, the way he wears it when he’s awake. His eyes squeeze shut more tightly, the only sign he’s at all aware of her presence. He doesn’t have the depth of her sensory perception, but she likes to imagine he can feel her here just the same.

Her fingers rake through his hair, thick, soft, and springy. She never did this before, not when she had so many chances to. There are so many things she didn’t do with him when she had the chance. He knows she loves him. She was able to make that much right, at least. He’ll wait, she knows he will. He’s spent centuries waiting, and he’d spend centuries more, waiting for her.

But she regrets every small moment she could have had with him as she was, before, all the chances she missed because she was scared. That fear of being hurt feels so small now, in perspective.

Her fingers slide out of his hair and down his face, a whisper of a touch he can barely feel. She can feel it, though. The coarse line of his eyebrow, the fluttery, soft fringe of his thick, dark eyelashes, the tiny raised edge of the scar on his cheek… He never told her how he got it. She never asked. So many things she thought she had more time for…

His beard prickles against her palm as she cups his strong jaw in her hand. Her thumb traces his soft bottom lip, feeling the breath he draws in, his chest rising underneath her. She leans in, desperate for that breath, for the sensation of him, his essence, moving through her. She wants to taste him again, feel him encompassing her, holding her tight, tethering her back to this world.

Her lips are just an inch from his when a cloud blows away from the moon and the silvery light coming in the tiny ship’s window brightens. Her thumb on his lip glitters silver, she glimmers like a diamond in the moonlight.

Not yet. She’s still more monster than Emma. She can’t get rid of this monster, but she’ll learn to control it. She’ll find a way to be Emma again, and the monster will just be a part of her to be managed, like her magic, like her painful past.

But she’s not there yet. Her glittering hand, unearthly against Killian’s warm, human face, is a stark reminder of that. He would take her however she came to him, but that’s not what she wants. She won’t come back to him until she can lie down in this bed with him as Emma.

Still deep in sleep, he moans. His eyebrows furrow. He inhales sharply.

“Emma…”

In an instant, she’s three feet away. Somehow, impossibly, he knows she’s here. He can feel her. The ache, the want, nearly brings her to her knees. The Dark One, fatally weakened by love and longing. As strong as she is now, she’s not strong enough to resist him. If she stays, she’ll give in. She’ll climb into those sheets made warm by his body, and she’ll wrap herself in him and let him remind her of what it feels like to be human. The temptation is maddening, but she can’t. Not yet. Once she’s here, he won’t let her go, and then Storybrooke and everyone in it who she loves will be at risk. This terrible power inside her still feels half wild. She won’t come home until she knows she can’t hurt them. And she’s not there yet.

She stares at him until his face relaxes and his breathing evens back out. Deep sleep steals over him. He’s safe, here on his ship, here in Storybrooke. She’ll leave him here for safekeeping until she’s ready to come home for good.

His face is the last thing she sees before she closes her eyes, and then she’s gone, and then she winks back into existence, far, far away. She’s alone with the monster again, and she has a lot of work to do before it’s tamed.

 


End file.
